Here is a really interesting way to run a competition using YouTube videos. IKEA Belgium wanted to celebrate the Swedish mid-summer vibe, a time when sales are usually pretty flat for them in Belgium, so they created a series of product based videos called “Catch The Swedish Light”.

The stop motion videos showcased the latest range of IKEA products, of course, but from there, it was all about tracking through the video frame by frame to pause it on the exact moment “The Swedish Light” perfectly illuminated the products, then capturing the random code on that frame (you’ll know because it goes yellow!) and inserting it on the campaign site for validation.

There were 48 videos, and the first person to validate a code won that product instantly, and along the way it helped raise IKEA’s sales in an otherwise pretty flat period. Really smart use of video!